


Apparition No. 12 (The Scientific Method Remix)

by Lacylu42



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-12
Updated: 2014-09-12
Packaged: 2018-02-17 03:06:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2294519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacylu42/pseuds/Lacylu42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione is the girl who knows too much.</p><p>Set during the events of Order of the Phoenix, in which Hermione discovers a secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apparition No. 12 (The Scientific Method Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Apparition No. 12](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/72746) by krabapple. 



_Hey now my red clouds're rolling in_  
To catalogue and number every stone cold dream  
And I've seen Sal thumbing his way up to the stars  
I've seen angels in the shooting galleries  
And heroes in the bars  
  
  
Hermione arrives at number twelve Grimmauld Place at sunset. The houses along the street are bathed in a strange, rust-colored glow that reflects off the low hanging clouds and makes the whole block seem ready to go up in a wild conflagration.  
  
She's holding Ginny's hand rather tightly. Traveling by portkey is never pleasant, and something about this street makes her uneasy. Mrs. Weasley is bustling around, passing out envelopes addressed to each of them in Dumbledore's hand. Hermione tears into hers immediately, guessing what it contains, and she is about to explain it to Ron, when the house materializes in front of her, squeezing into existence between two that were already there.  
  
She is speechless.  
  
Grimmauld Place is the ugliest house she has ever seen. The exterior looks like something taken directly from the pages of a gothic horror novel, all rotting turrets and pointed spikes, and the inside isn't much better. It's filthy and smells like a barn that hasn't been mucked in weeks. The light is poor, filtering in through windows so caked with grime that patterns have begun to emerge like eerie etchings in the glass; she stubbornly does not see faces leering in the filth. The wallpaper is peeling off in large sections and the floorboards creak with every step, no matter how many times Mrs. Weasley entreats them for silence. Hermione cannot imagine how Sirius can live in such squalor.  
  
In front of her, Ron suddenly starts as though something has bitten him, erupting into a terrified tarantella, silently flailing his arms like a panicked windmill. Hermione leaps to his aid, brushing the cobwebs from his back for him while his brothers snicker into their hands.  
  
They pass through the foyer with its strange portraits and tall velvet drapes and Hermione inventories everything, filing away each snarling serpent, each filth-encrusted nameplate, each emblem and scowling face for future reference.  
  
Finally, they stumble down the stairs into the basement kitchen, and Hermione lets out the breath she was unaware she'd been holding; this room, at least, looks lived in, with dirty dishes in the sink and a warm fire in the hearth, but Sirius is nowhere to be found.  
  
A search is launched, and Fred finds him, eventually, on the roof. Mrs. Weasley is livid.  
  
"I needed to see the stars," Sirius explains. "Thought I might hitch a ride somewhere." But Mrs. Weasley will hear none of it. Sirius goes around the room passing out tea and biscuits and completely ignoring Mrs. Weasley's lecture. Hermione tuts under her breath as he hands her a cup, even if she is glad to see him. The serpents painted on the china hiss and strike, and Sirius has broken three cups before the end of the evening purely out of spite.  
  
She sleeps well that night, despite the cold bed and musty sheets, because she can feel the hum of magic in these walls; it's magic, even if it is unfamiliar, and she has missed it in the Muggle world. Her dreams go untroubled because she knows that Snuffles is prowling the halls. She feels safe for the first time in weeks.  
  
Professor Lupin returns to the house a few days later, and the change in Sirius' demeanor is palpable. Hermione is glad to see them getting along so well. She knows enough of their history to have worried that forgiveness would not be an easy pill to swallow, but she needn't have been concerned. They act like schoolboys -- like Harry and Ron will when they see one another again -- laughing at inside jokes, punching one another in the arm, fighting over the last roll like Fred and George do.  
  
After dinner, Sirius breaks out the Firewhisky and Butterbeer, and before long, he and Professor Lupin are toasting each other as heroes.  
  
"To Snuffles -- the wonder dog!" Lupin chortles.  
  
"To Moony's furry little problem!"  
  
"To Dumbledore's beard!"  
  
"To those who went before," Sirius shouts, and the room goes quiet, all mirth drained from the evening by those few syllables. Fred and George raise their Butterbeers in silent salute, and Mrs. Weasley's eyes go dark.  
  
As Hermione and Ginny head for bed, Hermione can hear Mrs. Weasley starting in on a lecture about how Sirius is to mind his tongue when Harry comes, and Hermione is glad; she would have said something herself if Sirius hadn't been so completely sloshed.  
  
  
 _I've seen a death warrant out on the moon_  
I saw what happened when the prophet spoke too soon  
And I heard the radio sneeze into the evening  
And all the bat-squeak singers selling fake hope to the sleeping  
  
  
Everyone is edgy the day before the full moon, and everyone is pretending not to be. Sirius is the worst, talking too loudly, laughing too long, and, when he thinks no one is looking, pinning Professor Lupin with a stare so intense it makes Hermione feel uncomfortable. She concentrates on her newspaper instead, ready to redirect her nervousness into vitriol at the inanities the  _Prophet_  is publishing today.  
  
For once, she hopes that Harry isn't reading the paper, isn't keeping track of what the wizard world is saying about him, because it isn't good. She hasn't told Ron about what she reads. She can only imagine his reaction, sputtering, angry, indignant on Harry's behalf. She has always been the keeper of the knowledge between the three of them, and she is always glad to do it.  
  
Outside on the back step, Professor Lupin is chatting with Sirius and Mr. Weasley. Ron, Ginny and the others are in one of the first floor parlors, listening to the Quidditch game, and so Hermione has the kitchen to herself. The little window above the stove is open to try to catch a breeze, and she can just hear snatches of the conversation outside.  
  
"...didn't know you ever paid one minute of attention in History of Magic," Lupin laughs genially. "I'd wager Binns himself couldn't have drawn up a more realistic warrant."  
  
"I'd've caught the bugger, too," Sirius sighs. "Had it all planned. Was gonna ride my bike up there and take him down. Smug, cheesy bastard." Lupin laughs again, and Mr. Weasley clears his throat.  
  
"Speaking of which... 'Bout time to be heading in, isn't it lads?"  
  
A long silence falls over the men, and Hermione realizes that she has been staring at the same photograph in the paper for so long that it has begun making rude faces at her. She sniffs at it and turns the page  
  
Outside, she hears the sounds of chairs scraping, of bottles and cups being gathered together. "Let me know if you need anything," Mr. Weasley begins, but Sirius cuts him off.  
  
"We're fine, Arthur," he says curtly.  
  
  
Neither Sirius nor Professor Lupin shows up for breakfast the next morning, their places conspicuously empty at the table. Hermione and the Weasleys eat a solemn, silent meal, and then she, Ron, and Ginny slink back upstairs before Mrs. Weasley can think of a quiet chore for them. They pass Professor Lupin's bedroom on tiptoes, hardly daring to breathe as they step gingerly from board to board, avoiding the ones that squeak the loudest.  
  
But there is no more to do upstairs than down, and Ron is anxious; the adults announced that they will be going to fetch Harry in a few days, and Ron hasn't been able to sit still since. Before long, he switches on the wireless. Hermione watches his long freckled fingers fiddling incessantly with the dial.  
  
"At least put it on something soothing if you're going to make so much noise," she snaps and reaches across him to tune the radio to a Muggle station playing classical music. Ron rolls his eyes and pretends to snore.  
  
Later, Sirius asks her if it was Beethoven, and Hermione is surprised enough that she cannot remember.  
  
  
 _I've seen the cover up of cold hard facts_  
Burning acid holes in the magazine racks  
I saw Jenny have a baby in the street  
Where they're playing blind mans bluff between the dying and the concrete  
  
  
Hermione knows a lot of things. She knows that she knows more than most people, and she prides herself on it.  
  
She knew, for instance, when Professor Snape set them the essay on werewolves, that he was being very deliberate about it. He was baiting them, taunting them almost with something he wanted them to see. He all but gave them the solution by providing them with the clues -- this down and that across -- and once she knew that she was looking for a five letter word for werewolf, well. The rest had been easy.  
  
But Professor Lupin was a good man and a good teacher. She had decided to trust him just as she had decided to trust Sirius in the shack. Those were two moments in her own personal history, linked together by a chain of events too tangled even for her to understand, where she had allowed herself to be moved by feeling rather than reason, by her gut rather than by logic. Oh, she had made the case for logic later, but in those moments that mattered, realization had struck her like lightening from the heavens.  
  
She can feel the hairs standing up on the back of her neck even now, as though she is on the verge of some important breakthrough.  
  
Carefully she folds and smoothes the  _Prophet_  again against her knee, outwardly calm, but inwardly, her mind racing, checking and double checking her facts, cross referencing each look, each familiar gesture, each casual touch; words no more than half remembered take on sudden significance viewed in this new light.  
  
The half-completed crossword stares up at her from her lap, each word not an answer to the puzzle, but a clue, a key to a door she hadn't known was there.  _Madman, Voldemort, friend, Potter, prison, Malfoy, Harry, dog, rat, godfather_...  
  
And the word  _Padfoot_ , written in smudged ink across Sirius' forehead in Lupin's hand, which he wore proudly until Mrs. Weasley scrubbed it clean.  
  
Hermione shakes her head firmly. She's jumping to conclusions. She needs more information: facts, not conjecture. Unfortunately, she's fairly certain she's never yet come across a book that could help her fit these clues together.  
  
She smoothes the crossword against her knee once more before filing it in her drawer and going down to dinner.  
  
  
 _I've seen a paper corpse holding up a doorway_  
I heard the lonely voices singing "yeah I did it your way"  
And I held the future up to a looking glass  
It bears a striking resemblance  
To the embers of the past  
  
  
Hermione cannot think of a more depressing place to spend Christmas than number twelve Grimmauld Place, but Sirius is there, and Harry and the Weasleys are there, so she is there as well.  
  
Ron is glad she has come, which pleases her. Harry and the Weasleys are all tense and tired, but relieved that Mr. Weasley will be well and home soon. Even Sirius is in a jolly mood for once, singing Christmas carols and decking the halls to the best of his ability when the halls are as dank and disturbing as these.  
  
Ron, of course, pokes fun at her in front of the others for leaving her skiing holiday early, which she had expected, but then he corners her after dinner, which she hadn't.  
  
He is slumped against the doorway, his tall frame folded against the wall as though he is holding the entire house up by mere force of will. She sees the stress of the week weighing on him now that the others have gone up to bed, but she is sure he wouldn't want her to see it. So she quietly says goodnight and moves to go. He reaches out as she passes, catching her shoulders in a fierce squeeze.  
  
"Thanks," he says simply, as though she should understand all the words he isn't saying, which, of course, she does. She nods, her heart speeding up to a painful staccato as she slips her arm around his waist to return the hug. He rests his chin on her head for a moment, only a moment, before breaking the contact and pelting up the stairs shouting for Harry.  
  
It doesn't change anything, she tells herself.  
  
But somehow, the halls don't seem as dark as she heads upstairs to the room she shares with Ginny. She climbs past the first floor landing, smiling indulgently as she hears the boys laughing raucously from down the hall. Thankfully, Professor Lupin's door is already shut.  
  
By the time she reaches the second floor, however, she hears new voices, lower and quieter, and she pauses, telling herself she doesn't want to interrupt.  
  
"How long?" Sirius demands, and Hermione imagines she can hear Professor Lupin shrug as he answers, "A few weeks."  
  
"I saw the Father Christmas hats," Lupin adds, his tone changed to teasing.  
  
"Wanted to make things festive," Sirius says unapologetically. "For Harry."  
  
"Right," Lupin chuckles. "For  _Harry_."  
  
"And for the Weasleys," Sirius adds, and Hermione can hear the smile in his voice. She takes another step up, no longer fearing that she is intruding on something private. "Bad run, having Arthur in hospital for the hols."  
  
Hermione reaches the landing, seeing Sirius and Professor Lupin standing near Sirius' room, and she stops again suddenly. Sirius is standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, bathed in the yellow light from his bedroom, making him look years younger. Hermione can almost imagine what he once was -- young, cocky and carefree, a marauder and true to the name, prince regent of Hogwarts.  
  
Professor Lupin stands facing him, looking more casual and relaxed than Hermione has ever seen him, laughter in the bend of his shoulders and tilt of his head, the fine grey hairs highlighted in the lamplight like streaks of summers past.  
  
They are standing two or three feet apart, but Hermione thinks she has never seen two people look so close before.  
  
"Oh," she says quietly.  
  
Lupin turns and glances over his shoulder at her, broadening his smile to include her.  
  
The spell is broken.  
  
Hermione lies awake long into the night, her thoughts zipping from one fact to the next, checking and re-checking, but she already knows she's right. It is impossible now to understand how she didn't see it before.  
  
She decides, in the wee hours of the morning while Ginny sleeps peacefully in the next bed, that she will keep her revelation to herself. She isn't exactly sure how the others might react, but she can guess.  
  
Besides, it doesn't change anything, she tells herself. Not for her or for Harry -- certainly not for Sirius and Lupin. Just another fact to file away.  
  
  
 _I've seen the chorus-girls the ribbon and the rot_  
Seen electoral debates on the glass-rim of a whiskey shot  
And I caught the glimmer in a hurricanes eye  
I've seen these AK-47s with their noses to the sky  
  
  
Hermione wakes in the quiet darkness and for a moment she is disoriented. She was having the strangest dream, all weird blue light, death eaters and prophecies and -- she winces as she draws in a deep breath and the memory comes flooding back to her as sharp as the pain in her lungs.  
  
The Department of Mysteries, the Death Eaters, Harry--  
  
She wants to sit up; she wants to demand to know what's going on, to ask after the others, but she isn't sure she can. The crushing weight of panic begins to descend on her as she looks around the dark room, trying to figure out where she is. Where is Ron? Where are Harry and Ginny and the others?  
  
She turns her head, and finds that any movement at all is an exercise in discovering how much pain she can withstand without crying out.  
  
"Are you sure you're alright, Remus?" Madame Pomfrey's voice washes over Hermione and she realizes with deep relief she is in the hospital wing at Hogwarts.  
  
"I'm not injured," Remus replies flatly. He sounds anything but alright "How are the children?"  
  
"They will heal," Pomfrey says with a weariness in her voice that Hermione has never heard. Then, "It's starting again, isn't it?"  
  
In the silence, Hermione can feel the curse inside her trying to work its way deeper into her body, foreign magic invading her bone and muscle and sinew. She strains to keep her breathing steady, though a thin sheen of sweat has broken out across her skin from the pain, leaving her cold and shining in the dim moonlight.  
  
"It never ended," Lupin says at last, his voice hollow in the darkened ward.  
  
  
 _I smelled the ghosts of the ashes and the orchids_  
I've got promises tattooed on the insides of my eyelids  
And I'll be watching when the Richter reaches 10  
I bled by these weapons babe and now I'm one of them.  
  
  
For the first time in her life, Hermione is not happy to be at home.  
  
Her parents had often joked that she would rather be at school than home with them, but it had never before been true. Not  _really_. Of course she missed her friends during the summer hols, and she could hardly deny that she sometimes pined for the Hogwarts library when she was away, but those feelings had always been outweighed by the small homesickness she carried with her the rest of the year.  
  
This summer is different. She is different. Everything, she tells herself, has changed.  
  
She cannot shake the feeling that she has somehow outgrown the little bedroom lined with bookshelves, the twin bed with its sky blue duvet, the ceiling painted to match to resemble a summer's day. Part of her wants desperately to cling to those days when her mother's kitchen always had a bowl of apples on the table, when her father's den smelled of orange oil and furniture polish, but part of her feels decades older than the two people that occupy that quiet, homey world.  
  
She has changed in ways she cannot quantify. A thousand silent promises burn behind her eyelids when she sleeps, pulling her back toward that world, so much more her own now than this other. And so she tosses and turns, tangling herself up in guilt for leaving, even while she is still there.  
  
Her mother tries to comfort and empathize, offering strong tea and a sympathetic ear, but Hermione cannot find the words to explain what has transpired. Her parents already struggle to understand what they cannot see: the magic that has become as integral to her life as breathing. She cannot imagine trying to describe her part in a war for the world whose existence they can barely comprehend.  
  
She settles, then, on telling them about Sirius, because grief is something they can understand.  
  
It is less than two weeks before Ron sends for her. Her parents are not happy to see her go, but neither do they refuse her. She has barely begun to unpack her trunk before her books, her clothes, the odds and ends of her life fill it neatly again.  
  
The day before she leaves, her mother brings her a small potted orchid from the greenhouse, beautiful and regal with its pure white head bowed on a single slender stalk.  
  
"It will bloom at the same time every year," she says quietly, stroking one of the shiny leaves with the tips of her fingers. "Maybe Harry or your professor..."  
  
"Thanks, Mum," Hermione mumbles, indescribably moved by the gesture. She reaches to turn the flower towards her, and her mother catches her hand.  
  
"You don't have to go, baby," she says quietly. "I know they're your friends, but... You could stay--"  
  
Hermione shakes her head slowly and her mother stops speaking. It occurs to her that she has not given her parents nearly enough credit.  
  
Hermione knows a lot of things. She knows that Harry will need her now more than ever. She knows that the second war has begun, and that she is on the front lines whether she would choose to be or not. She knows that nothing her mother or father can do can change what is happening because she is already in too deep -- that the power of love could not save Sirius, and it cannot save her now. She knows that she and Harry, Ron and Remus, Sirius and James and Lily are all just weapons in this war.  
  
They are all just facts. Things she knows. But the knowledge gives her no comfort.


End file.
